The Sunflower Network is a pretty clever computer help line service for consumers. You enter your problem, how much you’re willing to pay and click the help button. If you’re offering enough and there’s someone who can help, they will contact you instantly via chat, screen sharing and/or telephone. Hmm…I wonder what percentage of user problems nowadays relate to not being able to get online, quite high I suspect. Nevertheless it’s definitely an interesting idea, and the fact that you can install a Firefox Plugin to…

Here’s three online storage and data backup offerings which are based on the new Amazon S3 system. In case you’ve not heard of Amazon’s Simple Storage Service, it’s pretty cool, OK? But geeky. And that’s where these clever front ends come in. That’s all, thank you for listening. Jungle Disk. Super slick, super cheap storage and backup. Unlimited amount of data for just 15 cents per gigabyte. Enough for you grandma? No monthly fee, fully encrypted and secure. Filicious. Not…

A lovely little tutorial on how to use Google to find music to your taste via the Firefox Smart Keyword bookmark function. The great thing is that you can also set this combo up to do fast searches for anything, not just music. Alternatively, the terminally lazy among us could use the ready mixed G2P service.  Smart Keywords are an easy way to search websites right from the Location bar. Say you visit The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) all the time to…

Strobist is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to improve their digital photography in one crucial area – the use of a flash. It’s one of the areas that is hardest to master, but this blog starts at the basics and really does provide easy to grasp instruction in the art of very cool flash photography. You’ll need a DSLR to get the best out of it, but even point and shoot merchants like me will learn a trick or two. Check…

Paul Hallett, CEO of Schmap, sends me news of their latest toy, Schmap Local. It’s basically a browser plugin for speeding up online local search – say looking for a bike shop or whatever. Now instead of laboriously scribbling down the details, you just click a button to send the address and telephone number to your mobile phone, email or printer. It’s a small thing, but a real time saver. Only IE at the moment during the beta, but Firefox is coming in a…

Think you’ve been hit by malware? Trojan, virus, spyware, keylogger? Following this action list posted by Max Wachtel on Google Groups a while back may just get you out of trouble. Full text past the jump…

Media Convert is a free online file converter. The sites lists a huge number of file formats – video, audio, image formats etc up to 50 MB in size. It will even convert and upload to your mobile phone (useful for video?). It’ll be interesting to see how long it lasts.  A lot of formats are supported. Main formats are : # Raw text, HTML, XHTML, Microsoft Word, RTF, PDF, PS, Open Office, Star Writer, Pocket Word, Word Perfect # CSV, dBase, Microsoft Excel,…

Zopa is the ‘world’s first’ P2P finance marketplace and surprisingly enough it seems to be gaining traction. Set up by some high powered bankers in the UK, it acts as a go-between so that individuals can borrow from other individuals, without heavy footed banks getting in the way. It’s community, it’s secure and it’s based on sound legal foundations. Coming to the US too soon, so get ready Wells Fargo…  Zopa is the first marketplace for lending and borrowing. Trustworthy people lend money directly to other trustworthy…